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Summary

Description

Hardy & Wight, dated 1891. Roughly rectangular-plan, Gothic revival church, with three-bay entrance gable flanked by 4-stage tower to left and 2-storey stair tower to right; 3 adjoining forward-facing gables to side elevations; single storey vestry extending from NE corner. Coursed, bull-faced red sandstone with polished ashlar dressings. Deep base course to entrance elevation. Predominantly regularly-set stone- mullioned 3-light pointed arch windows; those to upper storey with cusped heads and hood moulds. Side gables divided by shouldered buttresses.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: 2-leaf timber-boarded door to centre of entrance gable recessed in gabled chamfered architrave, flanked by short shouldered buttresses; bipartite windows to outer bays; traceried tripartite window above. 4-stage tower recessed to left with timber-boarded door, deep balustraded parapet and weather vane. Timber boarded door in stair tower to right.

Small pane glazing in fixed light windows. Welsh slate roof with crested terracotta ridge tiles. Ashlar-coped skews. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

INTERIOR: trussed timber roof carried on slender iron columns. Galleries, on S, E and W sides with Gothic fretwork on the front panels, carried on square iron pillars. Dado-height timber-boarded panelling with fretwork decoration, carried to gallery level behind pulpit. 1920 communion table.

WALLS, RAILINGS, GRAVEYARD: good ironwork at S gateway with path leading up slope to church. Random rubble walls enclosing graveyard. Gravestones date from the 17th to 20th centuries, including Rhymer's stone set into SE corner of exterior church wall (see Notes).

Statement of Special Interest

Eccelsiastical building in use as such. The church occupies a prominent position in the townscape, situated on rising ground above the main thoroughfare east of the town, and is a good example of the work of the architectural practice, Hardy & Wight. It is largely unaltered apart from the slight enlargement of vestibule into the space of the church nave. There is good woodwork in the interior, particularly the gallery fronts and on the walls round ground floor and galleries. The panelling behind pulpit and elders seats may be contemporary with the pulpit and is probably a later feature. The ironwork of main gate probably predates the church - and may be contemporary with the earlier church on the site which was positioned E/W, having been reorientated when Hardy & Wight rebuilt the church. The Rhymer's stone, which is set into the wall of the church commemorates the descendants of Thomas the Rhymer.

The practice of Hardy & Wight was largely ecclesiastical. Henry Hardy and John Rutherford Wight formed a partnership in 1869 which lasted until Hardy's death in 1908.

References

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